Clocks
by alpha aquarii
Summary: Some things just keep ticking until the end. Oneshot, apocalyptic.


Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue. Done and done.

I write about the Apocalypse and the end-of-the-world theme in various forms way too much. Anyway, this fic is loosely based on what happens in one scenario from a book called Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. I found it while searching 'Apocalypse' on my library's online catalog; you can find it on or at some bookstore or your local library. Read it.

**_c l o c k s_**

You could have sworn the sun was dripping blood.

Swollen and red that morning, the chaos began when the first ruby rays bled onto the ground. The first sign that end times were here on a bright day, bright as a jewel. Mandy knew automatically that the first beams of light from the colossal sun had touched down on Endsville; it was just that sort of town.

She began to wind up the clock then, guessing a limit on humanity.

For now, she lay back in bed, and resolved to sleep until the screams woke her up.

-

The stars were visible in the cloudless sky, a sky red by a slow staining disease cast from the sun. There would be no bright blue dawn to see them through the end, only stars winking like crystals in a bloodbath.

Cue suicides. Cue murders. Pitifully, the last day of humanity on earth would be marked with red, the scarlet stroke of blood. Funny how their consciences disappeared in the population's last hours, a literal shout of freedom and despair. Knowing their doom liberated the humans, and suddenly they wanted to spread blood and spread the disaster. That wasn't to say people weren't panicking as well, as Grim could lie down whenever he wished and drift off to the sound of screams. Were they all dying now, dying like the swelling sun? Had Apollo finally relinquished his hold on the horses' reins, letting his precious sun-chariot loose to grow old, old enough to explode?

He wondered if Mandy had set the time yet. That girl was something to remember through the years.

-

She slept without the covers on, and lay there motionless as the last sounds humanity would make lifted her from a dream. There were high-pitched shrieks and guttural moans, frightened trills and doomed last words, all combining into an olla podrida of horror. She did not get up until the curtain framing the blue window caught fire.

Only then she left the room, and left the clock—God's gift, or maybe only Grim's gift—in there as well. They were destined to die in blood and fire, anyway. Her dress clung to her skin uncomfortably, but she made do.

The boy was in his room as she'd predicted. Only fitting that she'd spent her last night at her best friend's house—it was the least he deserved. She walked in, seeing him at the window and gazing down at a large fire outside on his lawn. The flames had hands; they clawed and heeled for the lovely air, creating a soft, rasping noise. A few feet down from the safety hatch and she'd see his flesh dance, do the limbo in glad fire.

"Mandy!" He turned around, sweating and gasping for drier air.

"Billy." She advanced. The window was already open, but she heaved it upwards even more upon reaching her friend. The only wind out was hot and stale and filled your mouth with beads of moisture. Not at all the arid, dehydrated air she'd expected.

"What's happening?"

"The Apocalypse." Her alarmingly calm eyes leveled Billy's own. "This time, we go down in fire."

"I don't wanna die, Mandy!" His clammy hand grabbed hers, and she let it stay there a moment before slapping it away. "Where's Grim? It's hot and the sky's _red_! Are we all gonna die, Mandy?"

She lifted him bodily, her perspiring fingers clasping around the base of his throat. His body was like smoke; almost weightless compared to her throbbing head, planning, always planning—he was warm like the playful grey coils, but he sickened her. Poisoned her like the stinging blend of chemicals in the fumes.

Carefully, she held his back to the window, where the crackle of the flames ravishing his backyard drew near and audible. A warm breeze played with the hem of his shirt and his red hair, not yet covered by a cap this morning. "I'm doing this because you're my best friend, Billy."

"Mandy—I don't wanna die!" he cried, oblivious. She felt his Adam's apple bob under her pulsing fingers.

Her arm was growing strained, but she held him in the air for a moment longer. "My best friend," she echoed, and moved him so his legs were dangling out the window, two meters above the flames. She loosened her fingers so that he slipped a little, her fingers now just below his chin. "Remember me."

"Mandy—"

Her emotionless gaze settled on him. "Goodbye, Billy," and she let him fall.

-

"It's almost noon, Grim."

"Mon, I hope I don't have to reap all dese souls," the skeleton replied. He'd been sitting on the grass until it had caught fire, and now he cautiously stood on a patch of unseeded dirt.

She disliked the pavement, how it threatened to burn her shoes. "Levitate me, Grim. I want to stay alive a bit longer."

He absentmindedly swung his scythe and the girl floated to his eye level. "Noon. Just half a day to go. Didn't I tell you this would happen, child?"

"I'm assuming that was a rhetorical question."

"You take de fun out of everyting. I don't give warnings to most mortals when de end of de world is going to happen, you know." He snorted. "Is Billy gone?"

Not a blink. "Yes."

Screams punctuated the air—commas, periods, and exclamation marks of them. Neither human nor reaper minded. "When de sun sets tonight, it's gonna set on an empty world."

"Where will you go, Grim?"

"Oh, back to de Underworld. You know," he paused as the Taking Tree hanging over Billy's front lawn caught fire, "tings will be interestin' when I'm not your best friend anymore."

"Is that your way of saying you might miss us?"

He frowned. "I suppose you could take it dat way."

"You're a pathetic cretin, you know."

"Tanks."

Dead bodies all around the world. Live, screaming ones here in Endsville. Mandy pondered, then addressed Grim again. "Put me down. We're going somewhere."

-

She had him levitate her again from a distance until she found the spot. "Here."

His bony fingers halted. "Are you sure?"

"I don't want to be the last one." Then: "Come on, the clock is ticking. I wouldn't want to be wrong, or late." She wiped sweat off her sticky forehead, gazing down unafraid at grasping fingers of reds, yellows, and oranges. It was enviable how the skeleton had no body heat or sweat glands.

Grim looked somber as ever. "Ready to break 'forever?'"

"Give me a moment, _best friend_." She thought silently; of Limbo, of hamsters, of idiots and adventures. "Yes."

He set her down again, this time in flames.

-

A curious thing, to watch someone burn. But when she descended, it felt normal. It felt right.

No screams, no grunts of pain, though it must have hurt. For a time, he could still see her form clearly before the fire—the largest one in Endsville, near the volcano sputtering ash—began to lick away her body. Still, he watched his best friend die and felt her go.

At last, when Mandy had been cremated alive (and silently too), he ventured into the fire, at home with the flames. He picked up her ashes before they disintegrated as well, and looked up at the bloody sky.

It would have been nice to put her form among the stars, Grim thought, but she belonged down below.

-

The sun disappeared from the world that night, six billion people gone at last. The clock had stopped ticking exactly at sunset like predicted; after all, Mandy was never wrong.

It rang into the silent, cold night once and then hushed, stifled—the world was empty now, there was no more to say.

**End**

If you have lots of questions, good. You're supposed to.

Thanks for reading. Reviews would be appreciated. Time for you to give me that constructive criticism you promised me, KitKatBarStory. And don't tell me I need to make things clearer, everybody; I'm the only one who's supposed to know what's going on anyway :-).


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